October 9, 2018

Contents

Patch Highlights

We’re celebrating the scariest time of the year with a seasonal event: Overwatch Halloween Terror! Expand your collection of spooky seasonal items and relive the chilling tale of Junkenstein's Revenge in our PvE brawl. This year we’ve added two new heroes to the fray: Brigitte and Tracer!

In addition to playing the limited-time brawl, you'll also be able to unlock new seasonal items—including six new legendary skins like Banshee Moira, Jack-o’-lantern Wrecking Ball, and Enchanted Armor Pharah—alongside our growing collection of bone-chilling gear from previous years.

Colorblind Option Updates

Customize how team colors are displayed in your user interface (e.g. nameplates, HUD, health bars, and hero outlines) with a set of nine different colorblind-friendly colors to choose from. You can also colorize enemy and friendly UI separately. These options can be found under Options > Video > Color Blind Options. All changes made will be saved and ready for you to see in the next match you play!

General Updates

General

Updated the audio mix to add more clarity and dynamic range for all sounds in the game

Developer Comments: We’ve added more heroes and features to the game, so the audio mix has become more complex, which required us to rebalance sounds across the game. In this update, we extended the range of third-person weapon sounds, increased the range of first-person weapon impacts in the world, and generally balanced third-person footsteps and ability sounds.

Hero Updates

General

Updated visuals for all shields and barriers to increase readability

Enemies’ health bars will now become visible to players if an entity they create deals damage to an enemy

Developer Comments: The health of Brigitte’s barrier was extremely difficult for most heroes to deal with, especially as she closes the distance to her targets. This change still provides Brigitte with substantial survivability but should also be more rewarding for opponents who pressure her.

Developer Comments: Doomfist is all about getting up close and personal with his enemies, but his Hand Cannon's spread was tight enough to do surprising amounts of damage at longer ranges, especially against bigger targets. This change brings his weapon in line with other shotgun-style weapons by making its damage fall off beyond 15 meters.

Developer Comments: Previously, McCree’s Combat Roll cooldown felt too restrictive, which sometimes prohibited players from using it. The new, faster cooldown allows for more flexibility when choosing between using it for mobility or an instant reload.

Developer Comments: We wanted to increase how responsive Pharah’s Rocket Launcher felt, because a full second of recovery between shots made it feel sluggish. To balance out the improved recovery time, we shifted some damage from the rocket's explosion to the direct impact damage. The overall damage potential is now increased when landing direct hits and decreased slightly when only dealing explosive damage. We reduced the amount of knockback each explosion causes, as it made it very difficult to aim at Pharah with rockets coming in at a faster pace. The Concussive Blast cooldown reduction should allow the ability to sync up more closely with the Jump Jet cooldown when used for mobility.

Developer Comments: Orisa spends a significant amount of time firing her Fusion Driver from a relatively stationary location. The weapon's spread value caused it to feel too random when leading targets at a distance, considering the projectiles' travel time. We’ve tightened the spread slightly, which should leave her close- and mid-range damage potential largely unchanged, while making it feel better when hitting targets at longer ranges.

Developer Comments: Soldier: 76’s damage output was a bit low, but not too far off from where we felt it should be. Making it take a few more shots to reach max spread smooths out the weapon spread curve and should make his damage more consistent.

Developer Comments: Torbjörn was initially designed to be a specialized hero, intended to be a strong defensive option due to his armor-generating capabilities and ability to control areas with his turret. However, the scrap collecting and Armor Pack mechanics have proven to cause problematic gameplay issues because of their feast or famine nature. To make him more flexible in a wide variety of situations, we’ve removed the scrap system, made the turret much easier to deploy, replaced the Armor Pack ability with Overload—a powerful self-buff—and transformed Molten Core into a powerful new area denial ultimate ability.

Please note that Torbjörn will be unavailable in Competitive Play for two weeks.

Map Updates

General

Reduced the setup timer for Assault, Escort, and Assault/Escort maps from 1 minute to 45 seconds

Assemble Your Team timer increased from 10 to 25 seconds in the second round on Assault, Assault/Escort, and Escort maps

User Interface Updates

General

A slider to change Player Outline Strength has been added under Options > Gameplay

Bug Fixes

Heroes

Bastion

Fixed a bug that caused the roll bar on Bastion’s Dune Buggy skin to obscure its view when backing up or firing in Tank configuration

D.Va

Fixed a bug that prevented some glowing effects from appearing on D.Va’s Nano Cola skin

Fixed a bug that prevented D.Va from fully appearing when viewing her MEKA Activated highlight intro in the Hero Gallery

Hanzo

Fixed a bug that caused Hanzo’s Storm Bow reticle to be visible while emoting

Mei

Fixed a bug that prevented Mei’s Blizzard from freezing enemies when cast in areas with low ceilings

Reinhardt

Fixed a bug that caused the player’s reticle to pitch up after using Earthshatter

Fixed a bug that caused Reinhardt’s Earthshatter animations to play if used while he was juggled in the air by knockback abilities

Fixed a bug that caused Reinhardt’s Rocket Hammer to knock enemies back further than intended

Fixed a bug that sometimes caused Reinhardt’s Charge to knock back the target rather than pinning them

Fixed a bug that would let Reinhardt immediately pin an enemy after a knock back close to a wall

Fixed a bug that allowed area affect abilities to hit Reinhardt’s Barrier Field from further than intended (e.g. Reinhardt’s Rocket Hammer and Junkrat’s Concussion Mines)

Sombra

Fixed an issue that caused Sombra to change the direction she was facing when using her Translocator to teleport